It has been a busy month for Gombeen Government. Not only is it business as usual, but business as usual, only more so. This month, Dick Roche, referred to with doubtless intentional irony by his Cabinet colleagues and the media as the Environment Minister, announced that the proposed M3 Motorway would proceed according to plan. Mr. Roche must have forgotten that he made the same announcement earlier this year, but then the policy of this Government has tended to follow the tried-and-tested pattern of announcing something as a fait accompli at its inception, and repeating that at regular intervals until it becomes true. Neither does Mr. Roche stop to consider that since, as he says, the planning process established and upheld by law etc. etc. has been followed through and that there is no helping matters, not only are his statements on the subject to no purpose, but so is his own Ministry. It is doubtful though whether he will take the logical next step: disband the Department and stop drawing his salary.

Excavations on what the media coyly refers to as the "controversial section" of the M3 route, i.e. the bit with all the monuments underneath, has begun. But since archaeological surveying, in places where reality is slightly more tenacious, is normally undertaken in the planning stage of construction projects, so as to know what to avoid, in this case the surveying will make no difference to what happens. But, ten years from now when the M3 will be, perhaps, nearly finished, instead of languishing in ignorance we may comfort ourselves that at least we know what used to be there before a road was built over it. Gombeen Government has decreed that nothing shall stand in the way of Progress (no definition required), and so it shall be. As we write, proceedings are underway to take the National Monuments ("Amendment") Act 2004 to court. We have already demonstrated that this Act is not only worthless as legislation but goes against the Constitution it supposedly operates under, so the outcome should be a foregone conclusion. Whether that will put a halt to the Gombeen Men is less certain. We forecast more emergency legislation to forestall this latest crisis in the Progress Process.

On 20th June, a meeting took place in Wynn's Hotel, Dublin, concerning the most ambitious act of Gombeenery ever devised by an Irish, or arguably any, Government: namely, the first-ever onshore gas processing plant in Erris, Co. Mayo. Since the media has maintained a near-deafening silence on this issue, we introduce it alongside the M3 Motorway, as the second major thread of our Foundation. The same issues are involved: the contempt shown by elected officials, state employees and their cheerleaders in the media and universities, for the rights and even the lives of Irish citizens, their contempt for Irish sovereignty and the Irish Constitution, and their orchestrated campaign to destroy Ireland's natural and cultural heritage, to efface the history and hence the identity of its people.

What would be comical, were it not so criminal, is the fact that their enemy, the Irish people, are required to subsidize that campaign.

© The Tara Foundation 2005.